


weight

by youcouldmakealife



Series: still always in tandem [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 12:30:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17224133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: Georgie’s never really been a person who buys into the belief that a new year means turning a new leaf, or that by turning twenty-five he’ll turn into a new, better person. He wants to be, though. Wants to be a better one, wants to believe it works like that. He knows it doesn’t. You put the work in. He’s been trying to put the work in.





	weight

Georgie’s always liked holidays. All of them, really. His mom’s gung-ho about them, pulls out all the stops — they’re the house that puts Christmas decorations up the day after Thanksgiving — so they’ve always been a big deal with his family. He isn’t around for most of them now, with the exception of the Fourth of July, Christmas, since he can fly out, so his mom’s started treating the All-Star Break like one, crams together New Year’s and his birthday and makes Georgie coming home a festivity, always saying ‘new year for you’, when he’s right in the middle of the season, right in the middle of himself.

Georgie’s never really been a person who buys into the belief that a new year means turning a new leaf, or that by turning twenty-five he’ll turn into a new, better person. He wants to be, though. Wants to be a better one, wants to believe it works like that. He knows it doesn’t. You put the work in. He’s been trying to put the work in.

He Skyped his parents on New Year’s Eve, otherwise spent it alone. Midnight passed sometime in the middle of an episode of a TV show he was binge-watching, cracking a tall-boy open every time the credits rolled. He went to bed more drunk than he’d been in a long time, the episodes creeping up on him, the beer creeping up at him, his phone an accusing five in the morning when he finally hit the end of the season. Woke up past noon, feeling like shit and not remembering much about the last few episodes. Happy New Year.

On his twenty-fifth, Robbie wished him a mumbled happy birthday, which was different than last year, when he ignored it, or forgot it entirely. He scored a power play goal, got a shaving cream pie in the face from Quincy after, along with an offer to foot his bill for drinks that night. It wasn’t a big one. He left after two, spent an hour on the phone with Dicky, who had just got dumped and was being kind of a sadsack about it, staying up late in the night, judging from his texts, the times he’d give Georgie a call, never quite sober when he did. Dwelling on things.

Not like Georgie can judge. At least Dicky didn’t dwell his way right off a roster, though maybe that’s being too charitable about himself. He might have played just as terribly if he’d still had the shadow of Robbie in Boston, but he’s pretty sure staying up half the night and never letting his glass hit empty didn’t help. He didn’t pass that on to Dicky — if someone had told him that at the time it wouldn’t have made a single, solitary difference, and mostly Dicky just needed to be listened to, so that’s what Georgie did, adding the occasional ‘better off without her’ when it sounded like Dicky needed it. It probably didn’t help. It might not have even been true. Georgie said it anyway.

Things are different than they were a year ago. Better, probably.

He feels like he’s got a pit in his stomach all the time, but then, he’s felt that way for awhile.

Georgie wishes he could believe in a blank slate, the possibility of a fresh start. Like his mom did, always making sure they’d wish for something for the year before they blew out the birthday candles, had an achievable new year’s resolution, told them every time, without fail, that it’d be the best year yet. Took them to church on Easter every year, even though she didn’t force them to go any other day, and every single year, Georgie heard about resurrection. Tuned it out, eventually. Anyway, you’re not supposed to stake your bets on miracles.

*

No one sticks around long after their final game before the break. Some guys are staying in town, but most aren’t, and plenty of them have early flights tomorrow, Georgie included. Georgie and Hartsy talk about their plans — Hartsy’s taking his kids to Disney World, the dream. Georgie wanted to go so bad as a kid. Remembers him and Dicky collaborating on a bristol board project about the reasons mom and dad should take them there instead of renting a stupid beach house less than an hour from their house again. He feels shitty about it in hindsight: they wouldn’t have been able to afford it even if it wasn’t for hockey, baseball, soccer, whatever other extra-curriculars they were in at the time, but it didn’t help, and hockey was the most expensive by far.

“Come by for dinner when we get back,” Hartsy says. “If the kids didn’t scare you off last time.”

Georgie has never met better behaved kids in his life, and says, so, grins when Hartsy does. It’s funny that the only guy extending dinner invitations to him is a guy who never offered them when they were both with the Barons, but then, maybe he knew Georgie wouldn’t have accepted. The only invitations Georgie was taking up at the time was with the younger guys, and those invitations invariably, well — Georgie doesn’t think there’s a single club in Cleveland he didn’t hit up, and he doesn’t even like to dance all that much.

“I’ll be there,” Georgie says. 

*

It’s a short flight to Providence, and Georgie gets in before noon. He told his parents not to bother picking him up at the airport, but keeps a wary eye out in Arrivals, because mom’s bad at listening. She gets the drop on him anyway, and Georgie has a split second with his heart in his throat before he registers the person currently trying smother him to death is his mother.

Mom refuses to let go of him for awhile, ignoring dad’s ‘Sharon, he needs to breathe eventually’, which is fine, because Georgie holds on just as tight, feeling something in him start to relax.

“I told you not to come,” Georgie says, when he’s finally been released, got his breath back.

“You knew she wasn’t gonna listen,” dad mutters, which, fair. “C’mere, bud.”

Dad hugs a lot gentler, barring a hard pat on the back that rattles right through him.

Georgie can’t stop grinning.

*

Mom took a few days off work — like Georgie said, it’s her newest holiday, and she takes her holidays seriously — offers to take him place after place, like he’s a tourist, and then, when he says he just wants to chill at home, decides that means a trip to the grocery store, stopping every few steps, all ‘these are your favorite!’, cart getting so full Georgie half-expects it to drag.

“I’m here less than a week, mom,” Georgie says, but she doesn’t seem to be listening. Offers to pay, and she doesn’t let him until he calls it a belated New Year’s gift, not that those have ever been a thing. It’s over a hundred bucks. Half of this shit is going to go bad or sit in the cupboards until he visits in the offseason.

Georgie’s so glad to be home.

*

He only sees Will a little, even though second semester’s barely even started — kid takes college more seriously than anyone Georgie’s ever met — but it’s nice to throw a few elbows and wrestle for the remote. Georgie wins every time, but he gives it to Will most of the time anyway. Not Will’s fault he never cleared one-seventy, and anyway, his job is to be the brains of the family.

“What’s that then, Dicky’s the brawn?” Will asks.

“Excuse you,” Georgie says. “I’m the brawn.”

“You’re the billfold,” Will says, and Georgie gently slaps him upside the head. He can’t really counter that, considering he’s paying Will’s tuition, he just wishes they’d stop mentioning it like it was something above and beyond. He can afford it, and mom and dad can’t. Will can’t. What kind of person leaves their little brother with student loans when paying his tuition’s a fraction of their salary?

“Hey,” Will says. “My brains.”

Georgie gives those brains a gentle noogie through Will’s complaints.

*

“Met anyone interesting?” his mom asks over dinner, his final night, and for some reason it’s harder to mumble a no when she’s sitting three feet away from him. 

“Georgie,” she says. 

“I’m not rushing it, okay?” Georgie says. 

“It was four years ago,” she says.

“You know it wasn’t,” Georgie says. 

“Your relationship was,” she says, and maybe that’s fair. Georgie doesn’t think anyone would call what they had last season a relationship. At a certain point, a certain level of desperation, you just take what you can get. Now he doesn’t even have that. His choice. He doesn’t regret it, because he’s pretty sure it was killing them both in slow-motion, and Robbie’s looked better since the season started, though it’s not like Georgie talks to him outside of team shit. 

“Since last May, then,” mom amends, clearly seeing something on his face. 

“I’m not rushing it,” Georgie says, sharper than he means to, and she drops it.

Will swings by before Georgie’s flight back to Washington, and Georgie distributes bear hugs before he leaves, mom squeezing back just as tight, dad complaining about broken ribs like he always does, Will letting himself be squished.

“Love you, Willy,” Georgie says.

“Quit being gross,” Will says, but Georgie doesn’t see him letting go.

“Safe flight,” mom says.

“Thanks,” Georgie says, shouldering his bag.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to drive—” mom says, cut off by Georgie and Will’s simultaneous ‘mom’, dad’s ‘Sharon’.

“Okay, okay,” she says, throwing her hands up, and then pulls Georgie in for one more hug before he goes.

*

On the flight back to Washington, the weight returns. Or, it isn’t quite weight, isn’t quite tension either. There’s no real word that Georgie can think of to encapsulate it: a coiling, twisting thing in him that pulls tight like a vise, settles in his stomach to stay.

‘Anxiety’, Daniel said, when Georgie tried to describe it in a session last summer, but it wasn’t. Georgie’s felt anxiety before, and this is something else. ‘Depression’, Daniel said, when Georgie said as much, and Georgie suspected he was just throwing things at the wall then, trying to make something stick. Unhappiness doesn’t have to have a clinical label, it can just be what it is. 

He didn’t say that to Daniel, obviously. Apparently didn’t even mean it, because even if Georgie rejects clinical labels, shoehorned in words with symptoms that don’t all fit, he keeps trying to find a word for the way he feels, keeps failing. Itchy, sometimes, like there’s something caught under his skin. Heavy, other times, like whatever tangled thing sitting in him is weighing him down.

‘Are you sleeping too much?’ Daniel asked. ‘Too little?’ A study in opposites.

Georgie sleeps like shit, has for awhile, but he didn’t tell Daniel that. Doesn’t know why.

*

“Do anything for All-Star break?” Robbie asks after practice, not quite casual, not the same way he’d ask David, or Elliott, or Dougie — but then, he’d probably already know their plans before they left — not even the way he’d ask Cap Q or Hartsy, but not with the same kind of lilt to it Georgie had gotten used to last season, every sentence out of Robbie’s mouth a veiled accusation or a barb.

“Went home,” Georgie says. “Hung out with my parents. Will, when he could pull himself away from school.”

“Say hi for me,” Robbie says. “Like. To the Dineens, but. Say hi to Will for me.”

Will always was his favorite Dineen barring Georgie. Undoubtedly he’s Robbie’s favorite now.

“Sure,” Georgie says. “Do anything good?”

“Went home,” Robbie says. “Saw family.” He says it with a sort of finality to it that Georgie knows means any follow up questions he asks will get shut down. Robbie’s family tends to do that to him, with the sole exception of his mother, most of the time. His niece, who was a little kid when they were in college, has to be starting middle school now, or close enough.

“See Gabbi?” Georgie asks, treading light, and Robbie’s mouth quirks up, almost a smile, not quite.

“She has a crush on Chaps,” Robbie says.

“The Bieber of hockey,” Georgie says.

“Chaps is way prettier,” Robbie says dismissively, and Georgie doesn’t disagree, but he sure as shit knows better than to agree aloud.

“Don’t let Lourdes hear you,” Georgie says, low. Robbie grins at him a little, that sideways, lopsided one that almost — but not quite — shows teeth.

Georgie wants to kiss him so fucking badly.

He looks down at his knees.

*

Robbie told Georgie to say hi to Will, and Georgie knows most people say that shit just to be nice, polite, him included sometimes, but Robbie doesn’t, wouldn’t, so the next time he talks to Will, he does, even though they don’t talk about Robbie, not like he does with mom, or even Dicky, more obliquely. 

“Robbie can go fuck himself,” Will says. 

“Hey,” Georgie snaps.

“He won’t even look me in the eye,” Will says. “I’ve seen him three times since you went to the Caps, and the one time he didn’t pretend I wasn’t there he acted like he was being so fucking _nice_ to acknowledge I exist, so you tell Robbie where he can shove his fucking hi, because obviously he doesn’t mean it.”

“Look,” Georgie says. “There was — you know what went down, and he—”

“I’m not a fucking kid, Georgie,” Will says. “You don’t have to explain breakups to me. But I didn’t do shit to him, and I—”

“I know,” Georgie says. Will worshiped the ground Robbie walked on. Georgie thought that was — it doesn’t matter. 

He thought that was a sign or something, someone else seeing just how bright Robbie burned. It doesn’t matter. They were around the same age as Will is now when they got together, and Georgie’s just starting to get how fucking _young_ that is. 

“Honestly, fuck both of you,” Will says. “I hope your fucking team crashes and burns.”

Will doesn’t swear like this. Dicky? Sure. Georgie, sometimes, but not Will. Georgie waits him out, but that seems to be all of it.

“Sorry,” Will says. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Georgie says, and means it.

“I don’t actually hope the Caps crash and burn,” Will says.

“I know,” Georgie says. “It’s okay.”

Will breathes in and out, uneven. Still upset. It’s not all out, then, but Georgie won’t push for it. “How’s school?” he asks, and mid-rant about stats, Will starts sounding normal again.

*

“Will says hi,” Georgie says, next practice, and tells himself it wasn’t just to see the edge of Robbie’s smile.


End file.
